Group that bought the rights to the video told to run entire meeting, not edited clip

A video of a Michigan educator telling politicians that
parents may not know what was best for their children was making national
headlines when Michigan Government TV told the people who bought it they
were violating terms of the agreement.

The video showed Debbie Squires, the associate director of
the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association, telling a House
education committee: “You know, educators go through education for a
reason. They are the people who know
best about how to serve children. That's not necessarily true of an individual
resident. I'm not saying they don't want
the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from
an education standpoint.”

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The video made numerous national Web sites and
was picked up by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Feb 15.

But the video was taken down by the Michigan Association of
Public School Academies, which posted the video on YouTube. The organization was asked to
take the video down by Michelle Webb, the acting executive director of MGTV, a
non-profit corporation that is financed through cable subscription fees.

Webb said someone alerted them to the video on YouTube. She
said she called the Michigan Association of Public School Academies and told
them they had to remove the video or play the entire video “gavel to gavel.”

“We don’t allow our programming to be edited in any way,”
Webb said.

The Association had paid $60 for the CD of the meeting.

"We wouldn't have posted the video unless we felt we
had a legal right to do so,” said Buddy Moorehouse, director of communications at the Michigan Association of Public School Academies. “We still
feel we had a legal right to post it, but in this case, when MGTV asked us to
take the video down, we decided to honor the request. The only reason we posted
the clip in the first place was to highlight an attitude that far too many
people in the traditional school community have — that parents don't know
what's best for their own children when it comes to picking a school. We
strongly disagree with the sentiments that were expressed in that clip. Parents
absolutely do know what's best for their children, and they deserve the right
to pick the school that works best for them."

The video was the subject of a commentary posted
by Michigan Capitol Confidential on February 10. It was put back up on YouTube
by another user and can be viewed here.

As part of our efforts on government transparency, we obtained data on the compensation of most public employees in the state. This information has been used to fact check claims about salaries, verify data from other open records requests, and hold government spending accountable.

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